Break the Cocoon
by Deathly Noted
Summary: Mello walked a straight path in life, with only one thing in mind: being the best. His afterlife has become twisted as a result. Is this Hell or something else? MelloxMatt.
1. Judas Kiss

Mello was disappointed, though not at all surprised, when he awoke in a sea of red and gold flames. All his Hail Mary's and good intentions couldn't counteract the fact that he was a sinner of the worst degree, a murderer, and so he had prepared himself for fire and brimstone long before his heart beat its last. Hell would inevitably be painful, but it was also predictable, and so he knew he could endure it, perhaps even conquer it someday and escape…

Yet, as his senses sharpened, he realized he wasn't burning at all; he was lying in a field of flowers. Vermilion, crimson, caramel — every shade swirled together like flickering fire, and he recognized this place, though he had never been here before… déjà vu? No, he remembered now. It was that painting Matt kept in his bedroom. Once, in the idle afterglow of sex, Mello asked about it, and it was with a sly smile that Matt said it was Linda's interpretation of their relationship. He hadn't bothered to analyze the painting, writing the comment off as another one of Matt's jokes, but now the artwork had come to life all around him, and he was being _forced_ to analyze it. Seeing those twisted yet beautiful paint blossoms sprawled out endlessly in every direction, swaying though he felt no breeze over his skin, made his stomach clench and his eyes burn. He had indeed underestimated Hell, if he was doomed to spend an eternity alone in this place.

But then, as if to mock the notion that he was alone, he heard a voice. It was a mere murmur, the words indiscernible, yet it resounded in the oppressively silent field.

"…Matt?" he hardly dared to whisper, scanning hopelessly for a glimpse of red hair amidst red petals, for oppositional movement amidst the repetitious back-and-forth flower dance. Clenching his sweaty palms, he called for Matt a bit louder, though he was terrified of whom or what he might summon with the name, even if it really was Matt — no, _especially_ if it was Matt. He as good as put the bullets in Matt's chest, but Matt would still greet him with a smile, and he would love Matt for it and hate himself.

Finally, he received an answer from the voice, soft and unreadable as before. This time, however, he anticipated the sound, and so he was able to discern its origin. Swiveling around, he peered over the heads of the flowers and was shocked to see that the flora thinned out nearby, giving way to a misty lake. Had that been there before? Was that even in the original painting? He could only remember the vibrant colors of the flowers, the fire…

Suspiciously, Mello moved toward the lake's edge, slowing considerably when the fog suddenly became so dense he could barely see; but despite his cautiousness, he tripped mere moments later, his fall cushioned by something soft and warm.

"Ow." Matt blinked up at him, bleary from sleep, for a long moment of mutual bemusement, before his face softened into that smile Mello had both longed for and feared. "_Mello._ God, I missed you. I missed you, I missed you."

Claustrophobia settled in as fingers brushed through his hair and gentle words tickled his ear, and he struggled and squirmed until Matt reluctantly released him from his affectionate cage.

"We've only been apart for a couple hours," Mello groused, scowling to mask his anxiety, and Matt's smile faltered.

"I've been here for months — years — I don't even know. I've been waiting and waiting, hoping I could see you again someday… and finally, you're here." Then, he smiled again; but Mello frowned, profoundly disturbed by Matt's words and the possibilities they presented. Were they experiencing different timelines? Was this… not the real Matt? It didn't make sense on any level, and he needed answers.

"Prove that you're really Matt," he threatened, reflecting smoke and fire and Matt's face struck by words, words again and again and never his hands, on the canvas of his slitted black eyes.

"Of course I'm…" Matt's voice cracked. "Remember… remember the time you told me to jump down the stairs, and I sprained my ankle? You were always testing me…" An unsteady burst of laughter escaped from his lips. "Why can't you just trust me for once? We've known each other our whole lives, and you won't even let me hug you."

"…Sorry," Mello responded flatly, not sounding particularly apologetic, but he let his muscles relax, sliding gracefully from his crouched position into his typical open-legged sprawl and hunching over with his forearms on his thighs. The composite image of dangling red rosary beads and Matt's tousled hair, strewn across the ground, kept him staring in fixated silence until the living portrait moved, Matt mouthing words Mello's lagging brain couldn't interpret for a few moments: 'It's okay'? "Actually, Matt, it's not okay. It's a far fuck from okay. I got us both killed, our sense of time is skewed, and this place gives me the creeps…"

"You don't like it here?" Matt asked, pulling his goggles over his eyes, but the protective layer of plastic couldn't conceal his offended tone. This gesture had been part of their lives ever since Matt wore goggles and Mello spoke sharply, yet the routine act felt out of context and left Mello more confused than ever.

"Who would?"

"We can move into the light if you want…"

"That's not the problem." Sighing, Mello traced the crucifix on his rosary up to the crimson blood beads. "Matt, we're in _Hell_."

"I don't think so." The remark, an attempt at his typical offhandedness, was stained with conviction at the edges. Mello honed in on the slip up expectantly.

"What makes you say that?" he urged.

"I've been here a long time, Mello," Matt said slowly. "I figured out some stuff."

Patience worn thin, he snapped, "Yeah, and I'm asking you what you figured out!"

"I'll tell you if you promise not to get mad. Just don't get mad, okay?" Matt was gnawing at his lower lip, upturning soil with the heel of his boot, and acting generally jittery as he spoke, which alarmed Mello in turn. Usually, Matt at least attempted to appear calm and collected in tense situations, so to completely lose control like this… it was serious.

"Matt… what is it?" he spoke so softly, almost gently, that they were both surprised, Matt into tumbles of speech and Mello into tremulous silence.

"The truth is, this is Heaven, and you're technically not supposed to be here… but your soul was in limbo, and I couldn't just leave you there to be damned, you know? I had to find a way to save you, and I did, eventually. I just had to concentrate really hard and align our wave patterns, and… and, um, that probably doesn't make much sense, but that's what I was doing when you first ran into me. Um…" Pausing in his rambling, Matt's fingers grasped for a pack of cigarettes that wasn't there, and he heaved a sigh. "Are you mad?"

Mello opened his mouth to speak but found that he couldn't, so he shook his head, no, no, no… not anger… but there was shock, guilt, gratitude; and above all, _fear_. This was a dangerous game Matt was playing, gambling with God, and he would inevitably lose; he would sacrifice himself all over again, unless Mello made his move.

"I can't stay here," he said, grabbing hold of Matt's goggles and pulling them away even as Matt flinched and fought to avert his gaze. Mello tipped his chin upward and forcefully locked their eyes, repeating, "I can't stay here."

"Mello, please…" Matt murmured, horrorstruck, heartbroken.

"Send me back."

"I could never—"

"Then I'll find my own way out. Goodbye, Matt." Smiling somewhat forlornly, he absolved Matt's warm flesh and took cold holy sculpture in hand with a prayer on his lips: "It's for the best."

* * *

I can open your eyes.

I can change your mind.

* * *

"Mello,_ wait!_" 

The voice resounded around him, suppressed and nearly silenced by November rain, yet it was still clearly panicked, yet it was not soft enough that he could bring himself to ignore its presence. He found himself stopping to stare somberly as Matt sprinted through the downpour and collapsed on the other side of the gates, his fingers clenching and unclenching around the bars in agitation, heaving almost to the point where he looked like he was going to throw up.

"Mel…lo…" There was only the sound of the rain for a few moments as Matt strained to regain control of his vocal chords; then he implored, "Take me with you."

"No," Mello said bluntly.

"I'm third. I'm not… useless…" A note of desperation was evident in the curve of his words, in the defeated slump of his body, and Mello almost felt sorry.

"Goodbye, Matt. It's for the best."

* * *

I can repaint your walls

blue or black or white or purple… red.

* * *

"_Goodbye, Matt. It's for the best."_

On the verge of closing his eyes and losing himself to prayer, Mello was brought back to reality with a stinging slap to the face. Two pairs of eyes locked onto each other, both wide and bewildered with what had taken place, a strange sort of mirror image but for one detail.

"What the hell? Why are you crying?" Mello demanded. He looked on in what felt like a state of suspended animation as Matt's features crumpled further and the tears began to fall in earnest.

"Don't leave me, don't leave me, don't leave me," begged the broken doll on infinite repeat, clinging close to him even as the paint began to crumble and flake all around them, and finally darkness crashed down and Matt could neither be heard nor seen nor felt anymore.

* * *

**A/N:** I'll give you a hint about the next chapter: it's called Seven Deadly Sins. Heh heh heh. Lyrics between the scenes were not written by me; they're from BleacH (English Unplugged Version) by SNoW, though I edited them a bit. C&C? 


	2. Seven Deadly Sins

Mello was awakened by the jingle Matt had programmed into his cell phone, embarrassing and annoying yet strangely comforting when those nightmarish pleas were still trickling as cold sweat over his skin and tears down his cheeks. Never before had he cried for his dreams, but this — it was too vivid, like a premonition or a memory — and each time the phone rang, he was almost afraid that if he answered it, he would find cracked paint silence on the other end. Matt would be…

The phone was about to switch to the answering machine — Mello could tell by the climactic chorus of Final Fantasy battle victory themes — and ultimately he found that his desire to talk to Matt outweighed his unreasonable sense of dread. Groping blindly in the direction of the sound, he unearthed the device from beneath tangles of black bedsheets and snapped it open at the last second, greeting gruffly to mask his feelings, "Yeah?"

"Were you asleep?" Matt seemed amused, rather than regretful, about waking him up. "I guess even Mello-the-Workaholic slacks off sometimes… or maybe you send me out on these tedious errands specifically so you can lounge around on your lazy ass?"

"Oh, shut up. Did you call just to complain?"

"Nah. They're out of milk chocolate at the local store. Can I hook you up with another flavor, or would you prefer I travel deeper into the city, your majesty?"

"…I want crème brûlée."

Matt laughed.

"No, I'm serious. I want crème brûlée chocolate."

A pause on the other end of the line, and then, "You're in luck. Not only does it exist, they actually have it stocked at this craphole supermarket. Oh, I probably shouldn't say that aloud — the manager'll shoot me or something. Well, see you soon."

So he said, but an hour later, Matt still hadn't returned to the apartment, and Mello's craving was growing in direct proportion to his patience waning and his attention span deteriorating. God forgive, but he just couldn't bring himself to give a whit about the lessons of Deuteronomy 28 when he hadn't had a single taste, a single velvet touch today. Inevitable, really, that he should give in to sin, stretching out catlike across the sofa to grab his cell phone and call Matt on speed-dial. The phone rang for longer than usual, to the point where he thought Matt might not pick up, but of course he did — he always did — and Mello launched immediately into his angry tirade: "Where the fuck are you? Where's my fucking chocolate?"

"Your chocolate is in the kitchen, where foodstuffs may generally be found, and I am in the bathroom, where people in the process of bathing may generally be found," Matt unabashedly explained, and indeed, running water could be heard in the background. "…Was this phone call really necessary?"

"Are you questioning my authority?"

"Um… no. I mean, no, definitely no."

"Good," Mello punctuated, severing the connection between them.

As promised, a generous stack of chocolate bars was waiting for him on the kitchen table, however the fact that Matt had failed to announce his arrival at the apartment all but overrode the pleasure of finally having his drug available. His first ravenous bite into the smoky delicacy quickly became a binge, at the end of which he still wasn't satisfied and went to find the real thing.

"Matt?" he called out around a mouthful of chocolate, one hand already resting on the doorknob and prepared to open the door. This was the established order of things in their residence: Matt never locked Mello out and Mello never knocked, but if Mello weren't overly angry or in a hurry, he would give Matt the courtesy of calling out his name before entering.

"Come on in," Matt called back, then added conspiratorially, "If you want to see me naked, that is."

Rolling his eyes, Mello opened the door and stepped into the room, but when his gaze returned from the ceiling, everything came crashing down with it. Goggles and jeans lay in a haphazard pile on the floor; the bathtub was steaming and full; and above it all, a spiral of smoke… but no one was there. Matt was gone. Mello made a low choking noise as chocolate turned to ash and ember in his mouth, subtle hellfire singing his nerve endings, and the scent of cigarette smoke came as stale paint to his senses, and Matt was _gone_.

"I'm in Hell, I'm in Hell, I'm in Hell," Mello muttered again and again, trying to spit out the taste with his words, but it inextricably remained, and when he found that he could take no more, when he felt as if he would suffocate, his body of clay suddenly animated. His eyes clamped shut as he bolted from the room and collapsed back against the door in order to block out that horrible place, yet as the latch clicked, another sound immediately assaulted his ears from within.

"—_lo!_ You're not going to Hell for looking at me or touching me or being with me. Damn it, I thought we were past this."

Mello's eyes snapped open again, heading quirking to one side.

"…Matt?" So unsteadily, it was a plea.

"It's okay, Mello. Really, it is," soothed Matt, his voice coming gentle and close even through the barrier between them. The doorknob rattled, imploringly soft, but Mello grabbed it and held on fast, and despairingly, Matt said, "Come on, Mello. I want to see you."

"I… I can't see you, Matt."

"What do you mean, you can't see me? I'm not some toy you can store away in the closet when you don't want to use me. I'm not some dog you can put out in the doghouse when you don't want to deal with it. I'm _not_." The words themselves were caustic, but Matt's tone told a different story, a tragedy that became increasingly apparent as he continued. "I'm your friend. I'm your partner. I'm your _lover_. I…"

"I'm blind. I'm deaf and dumb and blind. I'm so fucking _blind_. I…" Mello's hand trailed up to find the cross dangling from his chest, and gripping it so tightly that a cleansing imprint of self-punishment formed on his palm, he prayed: "I want to see you too."

* * *

The Lord will afflict you with madness,

Blindness, and confusion of mind.

{Deuteronomy 28:28}

* * *

Mello saw Matt.

He saw the bullets pounding endlessly into his body.

He saw the blood spattering outward like splashes of paint on a blank-eyed canvas, like the flowers of Linda's imagination blooming in real life for the first time, like the weeds and worms that would overtake Matt's chest when he lay in a shallow unmarked grave.

Mello saw Matt's body fall to the ground.

He saw the cigarette flame travel slowly upward, leaving ash in its wake, until it reached Matt's lips and blackened and curled the flesh he used to kiss and no one cared, not even the Mello of that day, because such details were unnoticeably small on a TV screen.

The scene rewound.

Matt was making his escape, and Mello tried to warn him to turn _left_, not right, but his route stayed the same. Matt was headed off at the end of the next drive, and Mello tried to warn him to stay inside, to shoot at the bastards, to do anything but—

Matt opened the door and stepped outside, trusting as always, utterly calm in his last moments: "Listen, I'm connected to Takada's kidnapper. You've probably got a lot to ask me. You aren't going to shoo—"

Matt died infinite times, but Mello wasn't allowed to cry, only to scream without sound.

Suddenly, the scene rewound past its bounds, reeling further and further backward in time until a new scene played. There was little respite to be found, however, in the sight of Matt being fucked with bullet after bullet thrust. This was their first time, Mello remembered, all broken glass and violence and lust on the kitchen floor, and the moans Matt gave were like song compared to his own pants and grunts. Perhaps that was even a smile on Matt's lips, though they had just fought and in retrospect there was so much _blood_.

Again, life rewound, past the feuds and games and dull days shared in their apartment, past their reunion in the blink of an eye, and then Matt was alone. The landscape of the apartment was the same, matted with wires and hardware and junk food wrappers, yet something had conspicuously changed, something in the way blue-gray eyes reflected the lamplight. There was no secretiveness nor even sadness there, nothing to draw Mello in like those eyes usually did, so he traced the living dead gaze to find a gun in Matt's hands, a bitten-down fingernail flicking at the trigger with pinprick click-click-clicks.

It made Mello sick how, when metal roved over skin, it was with more gentleness than he had ever granted; and he may have deserved to see this, the muzzle pausing at the underside of Matt's chin and digging in, but Matt didn't deserve to live it. Compared to him, Matt was so innocent.

Heedless, the kiss of death came, a lipstick-red spray that hovered in midair for only a moment before time reversed and Matt's skull became whole again. Mello mentally braced himself for a repeat of the scene as the gun played hide-and-seek and found Matt's chin, but Matt hesitated then, shaking, struggling to pull the trigger. With a sound of distress that overlapped the gun clattering to the floor, with a whimper of, "I can't do anything without him. I can't even end it," Matt buried his face in his hands, and… that never really happened, did it?

Countless images of Matt flashed before his eyes, crying and crying until it was a struggle to remember what his smile looked like, until Mello wondered if he had imagined it in the first place; and when his vocal chords suddenly became functional, against his will, he said, "Goodbye, Matt. It's for the best," the original sin, and the process began all over again.

Apparently, Matt started wearing goggles because the busybodies at Wammy's House kept asking if he had been crying, and the burn scars on Matt's hands were self-inflicted, and Matt wasn't very innocent when he beat Near bloody, screaming, "_It's your fault he left!_"

Matt's secrets weren't as glamorous as Mello had imagined. The smoke led back to a smoldering wasteland of obsession and dependency, ugliness and cruelty, blatant lies, and sometimes, Matt was just pathetic.

At the end of it all, Mello still loved him.

* * *

**A/N:** I have to admit, I kind of like this chapter. It's vicious, but romantic. What do you think?


	3. Deluge

When Mello came to consciousness, the first thing he did was call Matt's name. His voice cracked halfway through, partially from emotional strain but mostly from _puberty_, a fact he accepted mildly in comparison to the sound of laughter below. To hear Matt laugh again… to see him smile…

"Matt!" he exclaimed excitedly, leaning over the edge of the bunk bed until he could see Matt in his entirety. The youth lay on his stomach, one hand curled around a handheld, not a gun, thank God not a gun, and the other pressed up against his mouth to contain his giggle fit – but then, noticing Mello's presence, he flinched and stopped laughing immediately. A tense line, not a smile, came into sight as Matt's hand moved away to clench at the sheets like a security blanket.

"Sorry," Matt said skittishly, as if expecting to be punished simply for laughing, and perhaps back in these days — or any day before now — Mello would have.

Instead, he assured, "There's no need to apologize," as he twisted his head back and forth in an attempt to find a calendar posted on the wall.

"Careful—"

He lost his balance as if in response to Matt's warning, and as he began a headfirst fall onto the hardwood floor, he wondered if it was possible to break his neck and die again. Perhaps that was the gimmick of this place, for Matt to see him die rather than the other way around… but he never even touched the ground. Matt half-caught him in his arms, tumbled off the bed, and cushioned his fall, and they landed in a position very much like one they had been in before. Mello lay sprawled across Matt's chest, and Matt held him close, so close that he felt Matt's heartbeat reaching out to him, heard his beat-by-beat assertions of _I'll protect you, I'll die for you_ and confessions of _I love you, I need you_ and pleas of _love me,_ _stay with me_, and this time he didn't run from those emotions. He was ready to meet them.

"Matt, are you okay?" he inquired, observing Matt's face from an unusually short distance. Mello had always kept Matt on a leash, never letting him escape but at the same time putting as much emotional and physical distance as possible between them, and only when they kissed were they this proximate; but then, their eyes were always closed. It was strange that after a lifetime of knowing Matt and then some, that after watching Matt's life rewind and replay for eons on end, this was the first time he realized the exact coloring of his eyes. There were clouds of hazy gray on the bright blue backdrop, like a storm lurking even on a beautiful day, like a veil of secrets, like smoke… they were perfect for him.

"I'm fine." Matt was a fairly good liar — all of them at Wammy's House were because that's how they were raised — but Mello could still see that he was in pain.

Almost speaking to himself, it was so soft, Mello said, "You can be honest with me. Don't you trust me?" but at this distance even the faintest intake of air could be heard, and with those words Matt seemed to comprehend just how close that was. Mello was allowed only a glimpse of the blush suffusing Matt's cheeks before he was pushed away and presented with Matt's back.

"What?" Mello probed, though temperately, trying to coax an answer out of Matt rather than force one. This method, he found, worked better than being harsh with Matt ever had. The response was immediate.

"Do I trust you? Mello… you don't see it, do you?" So he was blind, even now, even when he thought God had granted him sight with the visions of Matt's life. "Of course I trust you. You've already done everything for me. When I was alone and didn't care… no, when I _wanted_ to be alone, you reached out to me anyway. I don't know why you did it, but… you saved me."

"That's what best friends are for, right?" was his grinning reply, though the guilt bled through his insides. Matt was going to suffer because of him, was going to _die_ because of him… but not today. "Hey, Matt, what's the date?"

Matt swiveled around, a melange of mirth, nervousness, and bewilderment still spinning on his facial features when his body came to a stop. His tone, however, when he pronounced, "The first," was rather flat, as if his vocal chords hadn't been able to decide on which emotion to portray and thus showed none. It only took a moment of pause for worry to come to the forefront, in both his creased brows and the highs and lows when he spoke, "Are you feeling alright? You never forget about ranking day. You're obsessed with ranking day. And you're acting so… so…" Matt never finished his sentence, but the meaningful look in his eyes implied the final word almost to the point of audibility: _nice._

"Ranking day, eh? You know, Matt, I've never felt better." A bit of a grimace had worked its way into Mello's smile, but he wasn't lying. "Will you come with me to the board? I… need the moral support," he communicated with difficulty. As much as he hated admitting his weakness, Matt deserved to know the truth, and he needed to be honest with himself as much as with Matt: he needed him by his side. This may have been the last chance Mello had to convey that fact, even if it would forever remain trapped in the past, even if this vision would disappear as easily as the last and ultimately make no difference at all as to how they had lived and died.

"First you admit we're best friends, then that you need my moral support… next thing I know, you'll be asking for my hand in marriage." The joke was clearly Matt's attempt to kill two birds with one stone, making a show of nonchalance while simultaneously making Mello as uncomfortable as he was, but it boomeranged, because Mello wasn't an awkward pubescent boy anymore; he was only trapped in the body of one.

"Maybe," Mello answered, smirking slightly as he stood up and offered out a hand to Matt. The expression on Matt's face was priceless — cute, even — but Mello only indulged himself for a moment before releasing Matt from his stunned, flushed paralysis, extending his arm a bit further and specifying, "Come on."

Nodding jerkily, Matt took him by the hand and allowed Mello to help him to his feet, leaving a trace of his sweat in Mello's palm even after their hands had separated. At first, Matt tried to walk a few steps behind, perhaps to hide from him, perhaps to show him reverence, but Mello slowed his pace every time until they were walking side by side, Matt's smiling profile in the corner of his eye.

That smile was what gave him the strength to look up at the bulletin board, where like the Ten Commandments in solid stone, it was decreed that Near was number one. Even after all this time, it still hurt, it still made something inside him burn, but after staring at the list of names for a long time, the text began to blur: 1. Near, 2. Mello… 1. Near, 2. Mello, 3. Matt… 2. Mello, 3. Matt… Mello, Matt… Mello and Matt… and finally Mello said, "So that's how it is."

Curiously, Matt parroted, "So that's how it is?"

"That's how it is." His nod was as brisk and firm as his words. "Let's go see Near."

At this, Matt became alarmed. "As your moral support buddy, I must veto this idea," he said. "I assure you, murdering Near will come to no good. If you wanna punch something, how about me?"

Matt pointed at his cheek as a target, his fingers unintentionally forming a gun, though not for long. There was the resounding slap of flesh against flesh as Mello knocked that wretched shape out of Matt's hands, and the redhead flinched back. Mello froze, feeling rather ashamed of himself, but then he supposed old habits died hard and of course it wouldn't be so easy to change the person he had always been up until this day. Even so, Mello decided he could try.

"Ah. I'm sorry, Matt. That... wasn't what I meant. I'm not going to hurt you, not anymore," Mello vowed with a decisive note, but when Matt's eyes questioned him for more, he continued, "I'm not going to murder Near, either, so don't worry. Let's go."

He acquired Matt's silent acquiescence then, though there was some hesitance in his friend's first steps as they headed for the common room where Near pieced together puzzles, made models, and played with toys all day long. Even when the rankings were posted, Near couldn't be bothered to check the bulletin board; he was much too complacent in his position as number one, _smug_, and he never once hid his true nature from the world: it was beneath him, not even worthy of consideration. When he ignored Mello, that was the worst of all.

So of course Near didn't look up from the replica of Wammy's House he was constructing with popsicle sticks and toothpicks — and damn him, it was perfect — until Mello announced his presence verbally, though even then Near's facial expression betrayed nothing. Whether his rival was shocked, suspicious, or truly apathetic about having his name called so placidly when Mello usually came to him screaming, and furthermore about having Matt brought along to one of their private confrontations, Mello didn't know.

…Unlike in the case of Matt's secrets, Mello wasn't sure he _wanted_ to know, and maybe that was exactly what this was all about.

"Near… Near, I…" Mello found himself at a loss for words, so he started with the simple facts: "I'm second. I lost." His own testimony of failure traveled up his throat and over the roof of his mouth with the afflicting consistency of sandpaper, yet the moment he was done, he felt exfoliated, cleansed.

Matt's voice came to him then, the soft surprise with which he spoke Mello's name cementing the thoughts in his brain.

"Near, I may be second, I may always be second, but… there's something, someone, more important to me than that. _Matt._"

The architectural model of Wammy's House collapsed, though Near hadn't smashed it in a rage; he stared unblinkingly ahead, one leg tucked to his chest and a small smile on his face.

Apprehensively, Mello redirected his gaze, expecting to find another frozen face staring back at him, but the Matt of the future smiled and exhaled the smoke from his cigarette with practiced noblesse, the antique lace he draped in the air vanishing the next moment like a ghost.

"Is that really you?" Mello wondered aloud, reaching out toward but not quite touching Matt, afraid even the faintest graze of fingertips would prove the body before him hollow or vaporous or breakable. He could still feel Near's blank eyes and equally blank smile pinned on him, reminding him of everything that could go wrong.

"Of course it's me. Who else would I be?" countered Matt through another drag on his cigarette, and Mello noticed that though he moved, like Near the smile on his face was a permanent fixture.

"I don't know," Mello growled, frustrated, then threw out, "God?"

"God, eh? I like the sound of that." Matt grinned mischievously and continued to do so even when he posed a question that should have been serious: "Do you trust me?"

Such contradictoriness should have inspired little confidence, but his heart supplied readily, "I trust you."

"Then close your eyes," he ordered and Mello obliged, pulling gauze over the light that was Matt's smile. In that dark place, the next thing he perceived was...

* * *

**A/N:** Wow, I am so embarrassed to be posting this, but I am going to do so anyway! I actually wrote this three whole years ago, but I thought it was crap and couldn't bring myself to put it up here until now... but better online than rotting on my hard drive, right? I actually have a bit more of this fanfic already written which I will (hopefully) force myself to post also. The next chapter will either be up after I get 10 reviews (because I'm mean like that) or next week (so probably next week, lol).


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